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MONTREAL—It’s not a problem unique to Quebec, but the fight over the future of costly municipal pension funds here is up against a distinctly Québécois opposition — influential unions that are using extreme measures to express their displeasure.

It would be an understatement to say the city’s chauffeurs, paramedics, police and firefighters — or their counterparts across Quebec — don’t feel they should pay the price to dig out municipal pension funds from the $3.9-billion deficit they’re in.

That’s what will happen under a new bill being studied in Quebec, and the frustration of unionized workers boiled over this week when a protest at Montreal’s city council meeting ended with off-duty firefighters storming council chambers, littering the desks of politicians with ripped up copies of their collective agreements and erecting a banner branding Mayor Denis Coderre a “thief.”

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An internal Montreal police investigation has been launched into the on-duty officers who stood by and watched the shocking protest unfold.

This was the backdrop for the start of parliamentary hearings to study legislation that would overhaul 170 pension fund programs affecting about 122,000 municipal employees in order to deal definitively with the panic caused by the 2008 stock market crash, continued weakness in financial markets and enduring low interest rates.

Twenty years ago in Quebec, each retiree was supported by the pension contributions of 17 workers, said Pierre Moreau, the provincial municipal affairs minister. That ratio is now three-to-one — and retirees are living substantially longer lives now.

“The consequence of this situation means that the funds, which were originally financed mainly by contributions, now depend for 65 percent of their financing on financial markets and they have become very vulnerable to market fluctuations,” he said.

The fix, proposed by the Liberal government with the backing of big-city mayors like Coderre and Quebec City’s Régis Labeaume, include a freeze on automatic indexation for retired workers, a lower cap on pension contributions, and an equal cost-sharing between employers and employees.

“We would have all preferred that the financial markets solve this issue for us. Unfortunately it hasn’t happened and the chances that it will happen are minimal,” said Alban D’Amours, who authored a study of the issue that has served as the blueprint for the proposed law.

“If we don’t act now the problem will become even more difficult to solve in the future.”

Quebec’s unions are infuriated by the wide scope of the legislation and the fact that it the uniform standards are being imposed upon workers across the province, even on municipal pension funds that are performing well.

The bill also forces retirees to take a financial hit in their pension payments, which would temporarily not rise along with the cost of living, for problems that were not of their making, said Serge Cadieux, head of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), the province’s most powerful union.

“It’s a retroactive cancellation of a deal made in good faith,” he told the parliamentary commission.

The law may also be unconstitutional because it tramples on the freedoms of association and prevents collective bargaining. “Challenging the constitutionality of this legislation is not a simple possibility, it’s a certainty,” the FTQ said in its brief submitted to the committee.

Cadieux and other union representatives say that the municipalities are using the pension plan deficits — which they acknowledge are a problem — as a back-door way to reduce ailing city budgets.

But Labeaume said the real issue is ensuring that taxpayers — the vast majority of whom do not have access to a pension plan — are not paying an unfair portion of the bill for city workers.

In 2003, $78 of each property-tax payment in Quebec City went toward the city’s annual $21-million pension contribution, Labeaume said.

“It will be $339 after taxes in 2015 with a cost of more than $132 million a year,” he said.

“It’s not normal that a majority of taxpayers have to pay for the financial advantages of a minority. Far from me to ostracize the unions, but you must admit that the balance (is weighted) too much on their side. I’ve said it and I’ll repeat it, I’m an angry social democrat who is looking to re-establish or put some fairness back into the system.”

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